Ten months after the crash that killed a 16-year-old Burnaby girl, the man accused of driving the car she rode in appeared in B.C. Provincial Court on Monday for the first time.
Christopher Walter Baires, 19, is facing nine charges in connection with the incident.
Four teens, two females and two males, were on their way back from White Pine Beach on the night of Sept. 2, when the driver of the 1990 white Honda Civic tried passing another vehicle around a blind corner on Bedwell Bay Road. The car veered off the road and struck a tree.
The occupants were taken to Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, where Melissa June Tomac, who had been sitting in the rear passenger seat, died of her injuries. Melissa, a Burnaby Central student about to go into Grade 11, was in the car with her boyfriend, best friend and Baires.
At the time, police attributed the crash to high speed and driver inexperience, and possibly alcohol.
Baires is charged with two counts each of impaired driving causing bodily harm, causing an accident resulting in bodily harm and dangerous driving causing bodily harm. He is also charged with impaired driving causing death, impaired driving causing bodily harm and causing an accident resulting in death.
Baires briefly appeared before a justice of the peace in a Port Coquitlam courtroom. He is scheduled to be in court next on July 28.
